Click to play videoIslamabad: As President Pervez Musharraf resigns, the mood in Pakistan is that he would be remebered as a man of paradoxes.
Political analyst Nazeem Zehra says, "He will be remembered as the man during whose period a watershed development took place in Pakistan, which is that the middle classes, the educated classes and the people of Pakistan began to understand in a very tangible way the significance of rule of law, of a constitutional democracy."
It was this understanding that brought the people of Pakistan out on the streets last year.
It was Musharraf's institution that had raised the extremist clerics of the Lal Masjid who ran a parallel government in the heart of Islamabad and it was the same army he sent into fight and then kill them - more proof of what many call the Musharraf paradox.
So how will he be remembered? Pakistani analysts helped put a report card on the former president together.
They said that on the negative side:
- There were two bouts of martial law
- He dismissed the judiciary, not once, but twice
- His handling of the war on terror has left the US suspicious, and Pakistan's public angry
- Musharraf's institution - the army - helped raise the extremist clerics of Lal Masjid and it the same army then killed these extremists
- The targeted killing of Baloch nationalist leader, Nawab Bughti in a military airstrike
- The National Reconciliation Ordinance that allowed Benazir Bhutto and Zardari's convictions to pardoned, but discriminated against Nawaz Sharif
- Failing to protect Benazir Bhutto - a killing many still blame his agencies for
- And turning a blind eye to the excesses and corruption of the PML-Q government - that was trounced in the elections
PPP's Chairman, Asif Ali Zardari says, "If I were to blame him in history, I would say it was a lost opportunity and time wasted by him."
In the next few months there will be plenty of time to think about those lost opportunities as President Musharraf becomes simply Mr Musharraf and the minuses against him definitely outweigh the pluses on the streets of Pakistan.
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